And by III I meant VI, blah. The numbering always screws me up, but III was good too. Apparently I’m a fake geek girl, even though I’ve been reading SF, using home computers and playing video games longer than most of the guys whining about it have been alive.

Ah Kels, Kels, Kels. Just think, if you didn’t have that extra X-chromosome and instead and a shortened corrupted twisted deformed little Y-chromosome, then you’d be able to do hard stuff like read and count and play video games and think hard and other stuff. Amirite!

FF IV/6 is really awesome. The characters are likeable, the villain is wonderfully odd, the story is actually worth following, and there’s even an opera in the middle. What’s not to like?

#6 Karellan:

Yeah, mostly the original Amano box art never made it over here when the games were translated. For that matter, very little of the original Japanese covers did, which is a pity given the crap they were usually replaced with.

I had to look this up, so to help anyone else out who’s wondering, the box in the final panel is of the original Japanese FF III, which the protagonist has presumably imported themselves.

Thought it looked familiar. Been forever.

It’s sad considering how progressive Final Fantasy tends to be as a series. There’s a balance between men and women in the leading cast, women aren’t exclusively depicted in bikini armor (really, there’s only one. All the other women protagonists wear armor similar to the men’s_ and the other worldly threats are usually just a back drop for real world issues to be played out in.

Then try FFX or Final Fantasy Tactics (War of the Lions on the PSP). The gameplay in Tactics by itself is worth playing but the world (loosely based on the Hundred Years War and War of the Roses) is just awesome. FFX… was pretty heavy handed on the symbolism but still fun. Just too easy :/

😛 Oh its fine I’ll probably get around to 6 eventually maybe even try 7 again at some point. Don’t have tactics or X do have 4,5 and XII. I have a habit of having more games then I have time to devote to them all so there’s always things to play in the future.

To be fair, while I love Xenogears it can be a bit odd at times. It’s still worth playing, despite its faults and bizarre Christian/Jewish mysticism references. Interestingly, when Xenogears came out it and Final Fantasy VII (huge plot holes and all) were massively popular among the primarily female group I was hanging around with at the time.

Thing about FF VII, it was the first RPG to really have a mainstream marketing campaign in North America, and was the first that really took advantage of the original Playstation. Heck, I remember TV commercials, which were unheard of for that sort of game at the time. In any case, it brought onboard a lot of people who’d never really played games before, including a lot of women. It also introduced Tifa, who while obviously designed for fanservice, was also a female character with a strong background (business owner in a tough part of town, etc) and not relegated to healer like female characters traditionally were (and of course Aerith/Aeris still was). but was made a brawler instead right along with the males and sometimes more so.

I’ve been playing games since I was eight. That’s twenty two years ago. I can barely bring myself to look at them anymore since I realised how atrocious most – if not all – of the female characters in them are. Squaresoft have been one of the absolute worst offenders in this regard for as long as I can remember.

I recommend sticking to Dark Souls; no discernible story means no real possibility for gender stereotyping or misogyny. Also you’ll be so fucking frustrated and annoyed and homicidal that any misogyny they have managed to sneak in is likely to go completely unnoticed as you smash the television and throw the bastarding Xbox out of the window. “What’s that? Is it some kind of treasu- no, it’s three zombies on a rooftop throwing grenades at me and now I’m dead again.”